A Journey from Within

Historian Mary A. Hill, who earlier chronicled the life and work of feminist theorist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, turns to the private side of Gilman in this annotated collection of love letters the activist wrote to her second husband, Houghton Gilman, from 1897 to their marriage in 1900. She wrote these twenty- to thirty-page letters on an almost daily basis, revealing a private and passionate side very different from the public career that had won her justifiable national and international acclaim. Although Gilman's published writings have understandably received considerable scholarly attention, her private letters have not yet received the attention they deserve. Hill puts the letters into biographical and historical context in an introductory essay that also explains their theoretical and historical importance. The edited and annotated letters then follow in chapters, each preceded by an introductory essay. The book concludes with a biographical sketch of the remaining thirty-five years of Gilman's life, together with an assessment of the letters' historical and biographical significance.